


This blind and horrible persuasion

by Akshi



Category: Turandot - Puccini
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akshi/pseuds/Akshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liu and Turandot do what they must.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This blind and horrible persuasion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raspberryhunter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/gifts).



Wait, Turandot says, as Liu is about to open the door. She draws a dagger from her belt. A slice across each of their left palms and they clasp hands. Their blood mingles, burns, smears on their wrists. Liu, Turandot says, be safe, but be swift. Do not let them suspect -

I know, Liu says and puts her smeared fingertips over Turandot's mouth. No more advice, please.

Turandot's eyes narrow, then crinkle in a smile. Her free arm wraps around Liu's shoulders. Only a request, then, my quiet one: come back to me.

She lets go and watches Liu slip out of the gate, regal in her crimson robes.

In the courtyard, there is a cart and a fat man with an unctuous smile. Later, there will be a slave auction. Tall weatherbeaten men who smell of horses will be told: this one served in the imperial household. A slavegirl fit for a khan! Rough hands will grasp her jaw and examine her teeth, squeeze her arms and legs. She will be flung onto the back of a horse like a sack of grain. Then, after days of riding, when her buttocks and thighs are raw and throbbing in pain, she will be pushed in front of an assembly of nobles in a tent.

A man with a kind face will touch her cheek with gentle fingers. What is your name, child? No one will harm you here, he will say. 

Liu will not believe him. She will shudder inwardly to have to live among the nomad barbarians. She will work to convince a prince that the princess of China is a prize beyond compare. _And that Tartar with the long bow, who wore the rich furs? He's extinct!_

Later, many moons later, she will be riding in a cart with Timur's fourteenth wife and their children. The cart will go trundling slowly down the steppes and on either side the young ones of the tribe will ride past, whooping. Timur's wife will offer her a round of mare's milk cheese and she will savour the sharp taste. There will be a baby on her lap, playing with her plaited hair.

In the palace, she had always thought that she was free. 

Above her head, a falcon will ride the air currents, looping in lazy circles. Her eyes will be too filled with sun. 

 

After the fall, they limp their way towards Peking, mile by weary mile. She had meant to walk the road back alone. Her work had been done in the lower ranges of the hills, when the tribes had come down for the winter. Men grew petty confined to the round felt tents, smoke making their eyes water and their minds fill with idle thoughts. A whisper in one man's ear, an insinuation in another's - _the khan grows weak; his eldest son has died in his foolish quest; and his youngest, well..._ \- and hands grew restless on sword hilts and bows. Too much fermented mare's milk one night, a challenge that Timur could not meet and it was done without anyone suspecting.

When Timur lost the throne, his wives and younger children had been given to the usurper, as was customary, and Calaf had fled. He had been blinded - that was not custom, but an excess of spite - and he was left on the hillside in rags. She had meant to leave alone, had turned to go and then turned back again. Turandot was right, she thought, emotions were nothing but poison. Strong poison, to make her take on a burden so heavy.

Liu is wracked with impatience, her hand sweaty and tight where it grips the old man's. My lord, she says, a little further, just a little further. Her voice trembles with the effort it takes not to snap, to jerk him forward roughly, drag him in her wake. They shuffle along the dusty road. All manner of travellers pass them by: peddlers with long poles of goods swaying over their shoulders; mendicants with rosaries and begging bowls; a troupe of mercenaries, swords strapped at their waists; roaming bands of ragged children. 

In the distance, Peking blurs in the heat and its golden roofs waver. 

 

Why would you do this, Liu? Timur's son asks. He traces her body with his gaze, arrogant. A wiser man would be wary, but Calaf already assumes what is most convenient for her to let him believe. She slides her eyes up to his shyly. _Because, one day in the palace, you smiled at me._

Later that night, his hand wanders over her breasts. She shivers and he takes it for desire. The old man is sleeping on the other side of the fire and his son's rough presumption of ownership goes unnoticed. Liu muffles her cries in her sleeve, her eyes dry and burning.

It is necessary. She has counted them in her head, the fallen princes. _Six heads in the year of the rat / Eight in the year of the dog / And this year - The year of the ferocious tiger - we are already approaching the thirtieth._ They have overplayed their hand and the people grow closer to mutiny with each head that rolls. Does Turandot see it? She must, surely.

But Liu has been gone so long, she no longer knows. A change in strategy is necessary. If the people grow tired of one spectacle, why, give them another: a royal wedding, more sumptuous than has ever been seen! And for their new Emperor, a strutting popinjay with broad shoulders and equally broad self-regard.

And what of the fact that you love his father and would not see him hurt? a sly voice inside her head asks. She ignores it. This is necessary.

 

As she hangs between two guards with her lip split and her face bruised, Liu knows she has no choices. She must not speak or she dooms Calaf and - by extension - Turandot. The princess is full of confusion and, as ever when she is thwarted, her confusion is turning to rage. Liu, why do you not speak, her every gaze says?

And Liu cannot tell her, though she tries. _Love, so great that these tortures are sweet to me, because I endure them for him._ Him? No, for you, sister of my heart. Understand what I am saying. _I give him to you, Princess, and I lose everything, even an impossible hope._

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Timur weeping. Enough! This must end. She seizes the dagger from an unwary guard and plunges it under her ribs.

 

Turandot sits up and hugs herself tightly, naked and shivering in the wind blowing in from the steppes. Three attendants sleep in the next room. She does not call for them. The Emperor snores beside her, stupefied by the pleasures of the flesh.

This is safety. Outside the windows, to the north, a wall is rising out of the ground to bar entry to the horsemen's incursions. To the south and the west are realms mazed and struggling to survive without heirs. Around the blessed kingdom, in all directions, armed soldiers ride alongside merchants to protect China's trade routes and gold flows into Peking from faraway places. 

This is power. Her word is law and now not only until the time that it amuses her father to indulge her whims. What matter if her words must travel through the ears and then out of the mouth of a pipe-sodden wretch?

This is freedom, for her country and for herself. And if she turns too often to find an absence at her shoulder, well, no one said freedom was easy. Liu, she thinks. Ah, my sister! Are you proud of me?


End file.
